Fear-jerker: America’s AI backlash

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1:31The Economist

1:37Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. And I'm Jason Palmer.

1:47Rosie Blau:Today on the show, divorce rates rise in China and why many Europeans see air conditioning as a moral choice.

2:02But first...

2:10In a Democratic primary in New York this week, one of the candidates, Alex Boris, who's a former computer scientist, was campaigning very hard on the idea of tighter guardrails for AI firms and their technology. And last year, I passed the strongest AI safety bill in the country called the RAISE Act. You had a whole bunch of political action committees backed by big AI firms spending millions of dollars to try to defeat him. They're attacking me because they're terrified of what I will do in Congress, which is pass strong AI regulations that protect you and your family and your job and the impact on the environment.

2:48At the same time, you had a bunch of different AI firms spending also millions of dollars trying to support him because they think their industry needs to be better regulated.

2:58Rosie Blau:Robert Guest is The Economist's deputy editor. In the end, Boris lost, but he lost to a conventional candidate who also came out on the day of his victory and said that he too was going to campaign to regulate AI companies more strictly. And that's just one example of how AI has become a politically explosive issue in America. And we're going to see a lot more of this. If this is such a politically explosive issue, where do the fault lines come? Well, this is interesting because America at the moment is a country where you cannot normally get Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything at all instinctively.

3:40If one party is for it, we're against it. That's not true about AI. You find that both groups have almost exactly the same fears. You have both Republicans and Democrats really worried by the idea that human jobs might be replaced by machines, that in the future they won't have any jobs at all. I think possibly the most important statistic here, Americans are 30 times likelier to think that AI is advancing too quickly than to think it's advancing too slowly. Only 2 % think it's going too slowly. And this speaks to the real fear that people have about change that is going this fast.

4:23Rosie Blau:We also spend a lot of time hearing about the opportunities and benefits of AI. So why are so many people in America so pessimistic about it? It is really striking. There was a Pew poll last year which found that Americans were more pessimistic about the technology than people in any of the other 24 countries that were surveyed. And it breaks down into different reasons. About two-thirds of them think that AI will reduce the number of jobs available in America. More than 70 % threats that it's going to exacerbate mental health problems or worry about the concentration of power in tech firms. And then a sizable minority, 41%, say they're either very or somewhat concerned that AI might actually cause human extinction.

5:11Any even small risk of that is something you might be troubled by.

5:16Rosie Blau:It's quite a laundry list of anxieties as well as opportunities. Are the concerns about it the same on the left and the right? The thing that's different is that you hear a lot more people on the left being opposed to billionaires, being concerned about inequality, and particularly being hostile to billionaires who suck up to Trump or the trillionaire who pals around with Trump and wants to put data centers in space. But at the same time, on the right as well, you've got quite a lot of people who are suspicious of the Californian tech elite and don't like the idea of a country where they're the most powerful people.

5:57So you do hear a lot of the same concerns there. And then if you get to things like people's children, I mean, I talk to really quite far left people at a progressive conference in America. And we've talked to socially conservative Senator Josh Hawley. And they both say pretty much the same thing about their children. They say you have children in this country who are growing up thinking that it's much easier to form a relationship with an AI chatbot than it is with a human being because they never reject you. They never tell you there's anything wrong with you. You're not getting any of the normal social cues that you get from the rough and tumble of growing up.

6:35Rosie Blau:We recently released Tocqueville Road Trip, our new podcast series, in which we saw some hostility there towards plans for a new data center in rural Michigan. Is that the kind of thing we're seeing more widely in the US? So what's interesting about the data centre backlash, part of it is just straightforward nimbyism. People don't like the idea of a hulking big shed in their community that's noisy, that uses electricity, and there's this untrue rumour going around that it will use masses and masses of water. Actually, they tend to recycle their water, so that's not really an issue. But what's Striking is that when people are asked about their opposition to these things, they're not just opposed to ones in their backyard.

7:21A lot of them are pretty much just as opposed to them anywhere. They don't want them built anywhere. That includes even Elon Musk's idea of building them in space. And so I think what we're seeing here is a sense that the data centers are a visible manifestation of very rapid potential technological change. And a lot of people want to block it for all the reasons why they're frightened of this change.

7:46Rosie Blau:We started off by talking about how AI came up in a congressional race. We've got the midterms coming. What can politicians do to appease voters about all their concerns on AI? That's a very difficult question. There's one area where the government can definitely make a difference, but which is quite speculative at the moment. if AI really upends the world of work and you find that a small group of people who own shares in AI companies become very rich and other people are thrown on the scrap heap, the government does have the capacity to redistribute the gains of AI if they are large. And both Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right saying, you know what, the public should have a big stake, a large amount of the shares in the top AI companies so that they reap some of the rewards.

8:36Now, that doesn't answer the more philosophical question of if AI makes lots of work unnecessary, how will people find meaning in their lives? Again, this is speculative. We don't know whether this is going to happen, but this is the sort of thing that troubles people a lot. But I suspect that this is going to be a big issue coming into the midterm elections in November and that the party that comes up with the more convincing way of articulating people's concerns about it, he's likely to do better.

9:06Rosie Blau:Robert, thank you very much for talking to me. Thank you, Rosie.

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10:44There are four words that censors deemed beyond the pale in a hit Chinese film. I want a divorce. Sarah Wu is a China correspondent for The Economist. The phrase was cut out from a scene in a film called It's Okay, the comedy drama about a strong-headed school teacher who doesn't want to have children and her mother who becomes more progressive over the course of the film.

11:15This film explores often taboo topics such as marital rape and the women's use of sex toys. And the censors didn't have problems with that. But at one point, there's this telltale mismatch between the mother's face and her voice when she tells her husband that she wants to separate. And viewers can lip-read the missing words. She says, sexually and emotionally, you've never made me feel good. I want a divorce.

11:48And why did that phrase, those four words, strike such a nerve? The government's keen to keep people in wedlock. The population's shrinking and birth rates are plunging. Back in 2003, the government abolished a requirement for employers to write a letter as part of divorce proceedings. This caused divorces to surge. And in 2021, a 30-day cooling-off period was introduced before a divorce could be made official. The numbers then dropped, but have since rebounded. And in 2025, divorces by mutual agreement reached their highest level in five years. And the rise is remarkable given the obstacles. Well, tell me about them.

12:32What does the letter of the law say? How does divorce work? So to get a divorce in China, you have to prove a breakdown of mutual affection. If both sides agree, that's easy. But if couples decide to contest this in court, such breakdown can be really hard to prove. Photos showing abuse can be rejected as evidence unless it's backed by a police report or a medical testimony. And in 2023, only 29 % of first hearings resulted in divorce. And even when the courts do agree to grant divorce, it usually takes about 18 months. and the way that courts divide property can deter some women. So since 2011, each partner gets back whatever assets they put into the marriage at the time of tying the knot.

13:23That means that men whose parents typically pay for the home or down payment are likely to keep the family home. And on top of that, last year there was a revision to the marriage law that's made it harder for women to claim money for all their contributions within the home, such as cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids. And so despite those obstacles, the bad odds, you're saying that more women are asking for divorces all the time. Why is that? For a number of reasons. Today, more women are enrolled in higher education in China than men. And though few women in China call themselves feminist.

14:04That's a politically loaded word in China and quite fraught. There is this demand for greater equality in relationships. And so I spoke to this family lawyer in Shanghai who told me how about 15 years ago when she first started working on marriage and family affairs, women would routinely cite reasons for divorce that involved egregious behavior, such as domestic violence, infidelity, or reckless gambling. Now they're more often to talk about the quality of the marriage and differences in values. So I think more and more women want to prioritize their happiness. Plus, better educated women can also afford to contemplate divorce because they can obtain higher paid jobs and pay the legal fees and afford life outside of the marriage.

14:56And so if it's so hard to get out, is that making people reconsider getting in? Yeah, definitely. More and more young people, and especially women, are shunning the institution of marriage. In 2024, marriages fell to the lowest number since 1980. Now, there was an 11 % bump last year, but that might have been because a leap month in the lunar calendar made it an auspicious double spring year for marriage. and the government's trying really hard to make it easier to get married. There's a new policy allowing couples to marry anywhere rather than only in their hometowns. But as one academic told me, the easy entry and strict exit approach to marriages is unlikely to boost their numbers.

15:45So how much is this, the government, the law, not catching up with cultural differences? There's clearly a mismatch here. Yeah, I think Chinese women are increasingly changing their minds. And we can see that in growing numbers blogging about their experiences. Divorce bloggers have become a whole genre. And their changing attitudes are also reflected in more films, on streaming platforms, and even in stand-up comedy. So for all their inhibitions about the D word, censors have allowed some leeway. In recent years, a hit TV show about celebrity couples on the cusp of divorce had prompted discussions across the country about marriage.

16:30And divorced middle-aged women, such as a comedian known as director Fang and Su Ming, a road-tripping live streamer whose life was made into a film, have been celebrated for leaving unhappy homes. So to make marriage attractive and durable, policymakers have to think not only about the beginning and the possible end, but also about how to encourage equality during it. Sarah, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Jason.

17:22You know how to terrify an American planning to take a summer vacation in Europe? Tell them they're not going to find much air conditioning. For many Americans, AC is a necessity, a birthright. This year, a combination of El Nino and climate change is going to make for a scorcher in Europe. It's not just a matter of comfort. The UN reckons that heat contributes to around 175 ,000 deaths a year across the continent. Yet, unlike Americans, Europe's residents remain reluctant. Europeans often see air conditioning use as a kind of moral choice. They mostly agree that first world lifestyles are largely to blame for the world's rising temperatures.

18:05Lane Green is a senior digital editor for The Economist. But they don't need to be so cautious. Europe's renewable build-out means that using a bit more aircon won't in fact crash the climate. Let's put some numbers to what you're suggesting. Well, some of the Southern European countries have the greenest energy mix. For example, on June 10th, Spain, where I was writing from, had about one-fifth of the greenhouse gas impact of the electricity generated in the state of Georgia in the United States, where I come from. So that was 86 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour of energy against a figure of 442 in Georgia.

18:43Those who are curious to look up their own energy mix can check this out on our website, apps.electricitymaps.com. And you can see that on a hot June day, about half of Spain's electricity comes from solar power against only about 10 % from fossil fuels. And France does even better thanks to its quite extensive use of zero carbon nuclear power. Right. But policies on nuclear aren't the same everywhere. blazing sunshine isn't the same everywhere? This doesn't hold throughout Europe. No, but you'd be surprised at where it does and doesn't. For example, Italy isn't quite so good. It gets a lot more of electricity from gas-powered generation.

19:21Despite being quite sunny, it doesn't have the solar mix that, say, Spain and Portugal do. Poland is still very reliant on coal, so its electricity impact on the climate is about the same as that of a lot of parts of the United States. Britain is a bit better than Italy, which is a laggard, but it's not quite as good as places like Iberia, and it depends quite a bit on the weather. There are also some unexpected bright spots on the map. You can see that Albania can sometimes get almost 100 % of its electricity from its extensive use of hydroelectric energy, depending on rainfall, so that can vary if there is a long period of drought.

19:57The Baltics are pretty good, and Latvia is kind of the best of the three, which gets more solar power than you'd expect. You don't need to be Italy or Spain or Portugal to make use of solar power. So putting the detail aside, you say in a general sense for Europeans, AC is a moral choice. Well, to some extent it is. I think that Europeans are generally more sold on the fact that greenhouse gases cause climate change and want to cut their use of energy, especially what might be seen as unnecessary use of energy. But there are other considerations too, of course. American households are just wealthier, however you measure it.

20:30One thing that's considerably cheaper in America than in Europe is household electricity. It's about twice as expensive typically in Europe as in America. But then again, European homes are quite a bit smaller. They tend to have less stuff plugged into the walls. And so Europeans use about a third as much electricity per household compared to the average U.S. household. The build out of solar power means that electricity can be cheaper precisely when it's hottest in the midday and late afternoon. Things like smart meters can help people know how much power they're using and shift some of their demand from peak times, like when they wash clothes or run the dishwasher.

21:05There are subsidies available in lots of European countries for renovating their old houses to improve their energy efficiency. And this is like free money because it typically means that these improvements will pay for themselves quickly. And finally, the war in Ukraine, which started in 2022, has prompted a big move not just away from Russian gas, but away from natural gas power generation generally. So Europe depends less on gas than it used to. And therefore, Europe has been less affected by the rise in energy prices from the war in Iran than America has. So your argument is, given all of that, the moral argument sort of dissipates and Europeans should crank it up and cool it down.

21:43Well, they should cool down their houses a bit, but they shouldn't cool down their efforts to make their energy mix greener. There's still a lot to be done. We need more green renewable power online, and we need national markets to be connected up better. This may sound a bit nerdy, but if you can't sell energy across markets, then you get inefficient use of that energy, precisely as an economist would tell you. And that's both in cost terms and in climate terms, whereas if the best greenest energy can flow, then it can go to where it's needed the most. but we still have lots of national protectionism that keeps that from being as efficient within the EU's single market as it should be.

22:17Europeans are working on building out battery storage at some speeds. There are lots of hopeful signs in the energy mix in Europe. There are pilot projects, small ones still, to connect electric cars to the grid so you can not only power up your car when you need to drive, but your car can be a backup battery and discharge when you need it to store power for your house and send it back into the grid. In short, completing the green transition will not just make the European economy less burdensome to the climate. It will do something that any politician left or right or center should be in favor of, which is make air conditioning available to all.